The ancient Russian folktale and the modern adventure novel have many features in common. For instance, the protagonist is a hero and he struggles with a villain who is defeated. Although professional storytellers orally performed the folktales, like the modern popular adventure novel, their tales were an appreciated break from everyday life and a source of joy and relaxation. One successful author of modern adventure novels is Clive Cussler and the recurrent hero of his novels is Dirk Pitt. Cussler’s protagonist is an intelligent man who always succeeds in the end. The purpose of this essay is to examine Cussler’s novel The Mediterranean Caper and see if its characters and functions correspond to those of the Russian folktale. A Russian structuralist, Vladimir Propp, studied folktales and he discovered that the folktales have seven different characters that perform thirty-one functions. All seven characters appear in Cussler’s novel, namely the hero, the villain, the princess, the donor, the helper, the dispatcher and the false hero. All but a few functions are at work in the novel. Thus, the Russian folktale and this modern adventure novel have more in common than a reader may initially expect.